After a 97-page, 41-count true bill of indictment was returned by a Fulton County, GA grand jury Monday night, charging Donald Trump and 18 of his associates with felonies, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis held a press conference starting at 11:35 PM Eastern time to trumpet the charges.
Willis said that each defendant was charged with one count of violating Georgia’s RICO law, describing Trump’s election integrity team as a “criminal enterprise” intent on helping Trump “seize” the White House on January 20, 2021.
She also said that while the judge sets the timetable for the case to proceed through the system, her office would be preparing a proposed scheduling order this week and they will be calling for a trial within six months. Willis intends to try all 19 defendants together, she stated, and didn’t elaborate on how that would be possible with 19 sets of attorneys who will all have different discovery issues and likely competing defenses to charges (which makes it impossible to try the co-defendants together), not to mention how long a trial would last when you have 19 sets of attorneys who can cross-examine every prosecution witness. A judge cannot order one attorney to ask questions for all of the defendants as a block, because that violates their constitutional rights.
Willis stated that she was giving each defendant until noon on Friday, August 25th to turn themselves in to Georgia authorities.
In reply to a reporter’s question about how that “fictitious” document showing open felony charges (ironically, the same charges Trump was indicted on later that day) appeared on the Fulton County Courts website Monday morning, Willis said she had no idea, and she’s not familiar with how the clerk’s office works procedurally. She did not seem particularly bothered by the fact that the grand jury hadn’t even finished hearing from witnesses when that document was posted, and didn’t even attempt to imply that she was going to look into the very serious issue.